[R-G] Open Letter to Fred Muzin (Hospital Employees Union executive)

[JULIE]

I was under the impressions that this was a list/site for ongoing
constructive exchange and dispersal of information.  Truly did not want to
read this personal diatribe .
Yes, there is a clash of ideologies in BC;  but, it is not a war.  Read the
rest of the posts for war.  And it is not a class war, we are virtually all
members of the lower middle and upper lower classes, despite our
aspirations.

essage -----
From: "Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby at resist.ca>
To: "RTL, project-x: it's ALL THE SAME" <project-x at lists.resist.ca>;
<generalstrike at resist.ca>; <letters at generalstrikenews.ca>;
<coalofcoal-l at vancouvercommunity.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 9:01 PM
Subject: [R-G] Open Letter to Fred Muzin (Hospital Employees Union
executive)


Open Letter to Fred Muzin.

Dear Fred:
You and I are not friends by any means, but I have known you from your
work and spoken highly of you for a long time now. Perhaps you are
wondering why I am singling you out to speak to in this public manner. For
that, a bit of background is in order.
From the moment I first became aware of who you were, I must say that I
was quite impressed. You were a leader of a trade union who knew just what
this government here in BC-- the most reactionary provincial government in
Canadian history-- had in store  for the Hospital Employees Union, and for
health care itself. I saw in you something I was deeply respectful and
hopeful for. I saw-- in a giant sea of trade union leaders who wanted to
retreat in the face of 9-11, who wanted to isolate the trade union movement
from the grassroots movements and activists, who wanted to speak the
language of compromise and single issue politics-- a (dare I say it) Trade
Union Bureaucrat who knew that the struggle of his union was a part of a
struggle that covered so many other struggles.
You also walked the walk. Here's my short synopsis of my observations of
you over the last few years. I first noticed that you were the loud, angry
TUB who accepted an invitation from the Anti Poverty Committee to speak at
perhaps the greatest day of resistance to this government: June 12, 2002.
You were not just on target with your criticisms of Liberal attacks on
health care, you were speaking about all of the other issues that day. You
were representing your union (as an executive that was automatic), but BC's
labour movement did not mobilize people for that action, the action where
we who protested Gordon Campbell stopped him from speaking at an art
exhibit opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Afterwards, even in the
climate that BC has produced over the Campbell years, you didn't apologize
for having been there when a group of “uncouth” activists (on both sides of
a perimeter fence, including blasts of pepper spray outside the fence and
police tackling of demonstrators inside) said with their actions that they
would try and stop Campbell nearly anyway possible.
A few days after that, I was off to the Calgary mobilization against the
G8 meeting in Kananaskis, Alberta. Again, by siding with the
“anti-globalization” movement, you took sides that many in the labour
movement work unpaid overtime to avoid taking. And when I and some friends
returned and attended a “report back” that called for a new approach and
new militancy in our resistance to neo-liberalism, you put yourself as a
direct contact on our planning list. This was while you were speaking at
the event, the only TUB to do so in the whole city. That seemed to speak
volumes to me as to who you were, despite the precarious position you held.
I saw a man of principle that could be trusted. From that point on,
whenever I saw you, I took note.
A couple of months later, Gordon Campbell was speaking at the Pan Pacific
Hotel downtown on almost no notice. As is often the case in such
situations, only local grassroots activists (spearheaded by the APC again)
responded politically in such a short space of time. You were asked to
speak to a crowd that might have numbered 40 or 50. You did, you connected
up the issues and you did so passionately. I recall at that demonstration
having a conversation with another unaffiliated self-described
revolutionary about how we both would be proud to stand beside you on any
issue, any podium and hear any words you had to say. Having personally
watched as TUB's around the planet retreated in the face of 9-11, who
politically attacked “uncontrollable” elements after the assassination of
Carlo Giuliani in Genoa Italy (July  2001) and who left a series of
activists in the streets to face the full might of the state in the “Battle
of Seattle”-- breaking a promise to bring the demonstration to the same
point, such praise from my cynical mind was real and very rare, if not
worth all that much to anyone in any case.
The reason I gave such praise so easily is that I thought you were as rare
as could be: a TUB who knew the real issues, who knew his and his unions
real allies, and who knew what form the struggle would have to take in
order to not only protect his members, but to protect health care in BC and
across Canada.
On Halloween 2002, again my respect elevated. You were not asked to speak
at a rally that mostly student groups had organized against the proposed
Free Trade Area of the Americas. Not only that, but the demonstration was
horribly underachieving. It was small and somewhat uneventful. You
attended, unlike others, and simply wandered through the small crowd. You
spoke to me specifically about the problems that your union and the health
care system itself in BC were about to face. By lending your support to the
struggles others organized, you made me believe that you understood
solidarity and that dealings with you would not be, like so often is the
case, a one-way show of solidarity.
But all of these events were only the beginning of my respect. On November
22 of the same year, you and others of the HEU leadership tried to force
the hand of the BC Federation of Labour, and tried to make others
understand the urgency of the struggle that the HEU was facing. You went to
the first attempt to “contract out” laundry for cleaning in Alberta and,
even with that weasel Chris Alnutt, you blocked the van trying to leave--
forcing the RCMP to arrest the lot of you. It was a plea for help, a cry
for attention to what was being done to the health care system, and it was
a brave move by a trade union leadership. Most TUB's have proven, time and
again, that they would rather save their own skins than take real risks.
Myself and many others outside the trade union leadership were further and
deeply convinced that we had a real working class fighter, a person to
trust, a person to line up with on the barricades.
And to be more than fair, most of the rest of the Trade Union Bureaucracy
couldn't care less for your plight. After all, would Bureaucrats like Jim
Sinclair really want to put it all on the line for the people who clean
bedpans, change sheets and do such menial shit work? A leader of the BC
Federation of Labour has paid his dues they would think to themselves, the
HEU was not the union they were going to lay it all on the line for.
Meanwhile, the grassroots activists didn't mind selling out the mostly
women and heavily people of colour HEU-- they were busy trying to “Stop the
Olympics” and other campaigns that were worthy enough, but not rooted in
the working class itself. Throughout this period, you must have wanted to
scream, to pound your shoe like a Soviet leader, to scale Grouse Mountain
and make people understand that the struggle the HEU was about to go
through (the Liberal government made no secret that your union was in their
sights a long time ago) was tied to the struggle for the rights of the
poor, unemployed and homeless to full, decent and free health care. It was
tied to the rights of all trade unions to decent agreements that respect
them as working people, and to all unions to collectively bargain. I am
just one of the many who didn't see that at the time. For this, you are not
only forgiven, we all owe the members of the HEU an apology for not
“getting it” sooner. We will all pay for this error.
These reasons and many more are why I write this open letter. I write this
because you have taught me much by my observations of you over the years,
and this last week has been no exception. We all, painfully, are already
aware of most of the events of the past week, beginning on April 26. After
over a year ago the members of the HEU refused to approve a deal that was
much better than what was ultimately legislated, they had gone on the
picket line to fight against the imposed contracting out of jobs, the speed
ups on shift, the 15% pay cut and more. They were taking a stand, and as
the government of BC started to ratchet up the rhetoric, other rank and
file union workers across the province all started to see that this attack
was not only on the HEU, not only on health care, and not only on the
public sector. It was an attack on the very right of unions themselves to
bargain collectively. So when Bill 37 was introduced it was mere seconds
before not only did you and the other HEU leaders take the cue from your
increasingly militant rank and file and defy the back-to-work legislation,
but wildcat strikes began all across the province. It's hard for me not to
go into this in detail, because such actions are so rare, so beautiful and
so full of the promise of a better day that I am loathe to not mention it
all again. After all, even some construction workers left their unorganized
job site and joined an HEU picket that day-- and were fired, without
reason, of course. Perhaps you could have said at least a public word about
them, the workers who gave up their livelihoods in a show of solidarity
along class lines?
I will stop recounting the actions of the three days before black Sunday
night. Suffice to say, when the IWA, CUPE, BCTF and so many small and large
union locals from so many different trades all show solidarity, it is only
because the rank and file of these unions force their hand. Almost every
picket was started from below, and begrudgingly accepted from above, after
the act was il fait accompli.
The BC Fed had to scramble. Men like Jim Sinclair do not like the idea of
the working class they think they run _leading them_ into history. They are
terrified of the motion of the working people beneath them, and so should
they be. Working people are not about protecting their summer homes, their
SUV's, their privileged positions vis a vis their own members. We working
people, in or out of a union, are in desperate need of a decent health care
system, a real living wage, protection from the whims of authoritarian
bosses and draconian economics. You had spoken and even acted like you
understood that so many times that when I heard the fix I didn't merely
think-- I *knew* you were one of the dissenting voices. I knew you wouldn't
act to destroy the greatest act of solidarity that the working people of BC
had ever coddled together, like a run away train-- because it came from
below. I was completely certain that you were not like that Jack Munroe
clone Sinclair who would help privatize health care to save his own skin. I
was certain that the prerogatives of the NDP, Carole James and her “open
letter” to Gordon Campbell and the Fed were at complete logger heads with
the TUB who had stood for so much more. When I was first told that you were
part of the executive that had sold out their own union, the workers and
people of the entire province to save their own pathetic little careers, I
said I didn't believe it.
But then I saw the vote call. 13 for the betrayal, 7 proudly against. The
names are out. You could have voted no and the Fed would still have sold
you out-- 12 -8 has the same exact result. Besides, I think all of us know
that brother Sinclair would have done anything he had to do in order to
scuttle the chance that the political situation would stop being Liberal
vs. NDP, but provincial governments vs. the working class. I was rather
stunned to see that of you.
You are off the role call of those who should be trusted. You are no
longer anything other than a Quisling to the working people-- you served up
far more than just your own members. Then, you made excuses; pathetic,
ugly, sad little excuses. I have long ago learned that Trade Union
Bureaucrats were not to be trusted as a whole. I learned when the tear gas
wafted through the air of Seattle and I had just turned 24 that big labour
leaders like Jim Sinclair and John Sweeney will do anything to grassroots
activists, to the basic causes of the working people, and they will always
get away with it until the day we make all traitors pay and reclaim the
society that was built, on stolen Native land, by the stolen labour of the
working class. In that much, I learned nothing new watching you turn this
last week when you were really pressed to the wall.
But I learned something far more important. Perhaps this might seem a
little extreme, dear Fred, but I learned that once a Trade Union
Bureaucrat, always a Trade Union Bureaucrat. Or, better put, once a
parasite always a parasite. How does it feel to know, after all of your
fine work, that this is what you will be remembered for?

Yours without any fond regards,
and in the greatest of contempt.



Macdonald Stainsby.
unorganized worker,
proudly raised by a single mother of the BCTF, local 41, Burnaby.


--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
--Brecht.



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